Whiskers on Kittens
by Teobi
Summary: Mary Ann remembers an old friend.


(The name of Joey the monkey is borrowed from the delightful chapter 6 of Island Paradise.)

_For anyone who's ever lost a pet._

* * *

Mary Ann sat on a log watching Gilligan playing with his animal friends. There was Joey the monkey, Sam the parrot, Emily the duck and Irving the fish was splashing around in the lagoon not far away, flicking the sun dappled water with his tail. She laughed at the antics of her sailor friend, but in her heart there was a twinge of sadness. It must have shown on her pretty face, because the next thing she knew, Gilligan was peering at her intently.

"You okay, Mary Ann?" he asked. "You look sad."

"Nothing gets past you, does it Gilligan?" Mary Ann said, lightly.

"When my best friend is sad, I notice," he replied, guilelessly.

Mary Ann looked down at the sand and shrugged. "Watching you play with the animals reminds me of some of the pets I used to have back home," she said, softly. "Pets that died, pets that I still miss to this day."

Sam the parrot perched on Gilligan's shoulder and squawked loudly. "Not now, Sam," the young sailor shushed the colorful bird. "It's Mary Ann's turn to talk."

Gilligan came over to the log, with Sam still on his shoulder, and sat next to Mary Ann.

"Tell me about some of them," he smiled. "That is, if it's not too painful for you."

Mary Ann made little swirly patterns in the sand with the toe of her shoe. "Roscoe was the first dog I remember," she said, quietly. "He was a big, fluffy mountain of a dog, pale brown. I must have only been around three years old. I vaguely remember trying to climb up onto his back and he'd just lay there and take the abuse."

"If I was Roscoe I'd let you climb all over me too," Gilligan said, with a gentle nudge of his friend's shoulder.

Mary Ann blushed and nudged him back. "We had so many dogs over the years. Some of them lived to be old, but some of them we only had for a few years, and even just a few months. We had a sweet natured dog called Bertie. One day we were playing around the tractor and Bertie fell under the wheels. We raced him to the vet but it was too late- he died in the car on the way. We cried for days, blaming ourselves for what happened. All he wanted to do was play with us, and it got him killed."

"I'm sure that Bertie wouldn't blame you," said Gilligan. "He would have known you did the best you could."

"I just wish we hadn't been playing around the tractor," replied Mary Ann. "We knew we weren't supposed to."

"You don't always know until it's too late. Besides, how are you gonna learn if you don't make mistakes?"

Mary Ann lifted her head and looked at Gilligan. His ocean eyes were as innocent as ever, but behind them she saw his own pain- the pain of always being blamed when things went wrong. She saw it, and she smiled at him and acknowledged it, and then she continued talking.

"The one that I will always feel bad about was Tufty. Tufty was the runt of a litter of kittens that our cat Bosie gave birth to. Bosie was always having kittens, she was almost a stray, the way she would just come and go, always getting pregnant, only coming home for food and shelter and to have her babies. Tufty had a tuft of fur on her head and she was really small and sick, we didn't think she'd survive. But she did- she survived and she grew up and she still had that silly tuft of hair on her head. She would sit with me in the mornings before school and share my toast with me. She would greet me when I came home and follow me all over the house like she was a dog instead of a cat. I shared all my secrets with her. I put ribbons round her tail and plastic beads round her neck and she sat there and purred away while I used her for my own personal dress up doll."

Mary Ann gazed out over the lagoon and laughed gently to herself. "She was quite a little character."

"Something tells me this isn't going to end well," Gilligan muttered. Sam fluffed his feathers and crooned an unintelligible word or two, and then fell silent again.

"Tufty got sick," said Mary Ann. "But nobody noticed, not even me. Looking back, I can't think how I missed the signs. She seemed okay, just a bit more tired than usual. I was at school all day, then I came home and had chores, and I didn't always notice whether she was following me or not. And then one day it was as if she lost weight overnight ..."

Mary Ann's breath caught in her throat and Gilligan put a hand gently on her arm.

"You don't have to tell me what happened," he said, in an attempt to reassure her. "Don't beat yourself up."

"She was such a little fighter," Mary Ann said, miserably. "She survived being the runt of the litter only to be let down by the one person who was supposed to look after her." The farm girl blinked away tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks. "Me."

Gilligan drew in a sharp breath. "But you weren't to know!"

"But, Gilligan- I _should_ have known. She was my cat, my responsibility. And I didn't even notice that she was getting sick."

Gilligan watched Joey the monkey cavorting among the trees.

"They don't always tell us they're sick," he said. "Unless it's something like a broken leg, you don't always know. _They_ don't even know there's anything wrong. They can put up with a lot more pain than we can."

"It was her kidneys," said Mary Ann. "It all happened so fast. I had no idea. And then one day, she just... she just disappeared. She went off on her own and she never came back. I never saw her again."

"Cats do that," said Gilligan. "They take themselves off to ..." he stopped abruptly, and Mary Ann finished his sentence for him.

"To die," she said. "It's all right, Gilligan, I know that. I know that Tufty took herself off to die."

"Tufty did what was right for Tufty," said Gilligan. "They live in a different world to us. Animals, I mean, not just cats. Animals don't blame us or each other when they hurt. They don't know what blame is. Only humans blame."

Mary Ann felt a tear slide down her cheek, and then another. Soon there were silent tears cascading down her face and she did nothing to stem their flow.

"Don't cry, Mary Ann," said Gilligan. "Don't cry."

"I need to," sobbed Mary Ann. "I need to cry. Just let me cry for a few moments and then I'll be done."

Gilligan sat next to Mary Ann on the log, with Sam perched on his shoulder, dutifully waiting for her to stop crying. After a moment he put a clumsy arm around her shoulders and cleared his throat awkwardly. After another couple of moments, Mary Ann's sobs turned into choking giggles, and she squirmed embarrassedly, her cheeks reddening.

"Thanks for putting up with me, Gilligan," she mumbled. "I'm such an idiot."

"No you're not. You're crying for lost friends," said Gilligan. "I'd be more suspicious of people who _didn't_ cry over lost friends."

Mary Ann smiled, but it was a sad smile, even though the sun shone on her face. "Tufty was my friend. For the short while that I had her, she was my friend."

"And she's still your friend," Gilligan said, wisely.

Mary Ann regained her composure, smoothed down her gingham dress and patted her pigtails into place. Then she took a deep breath and let it out through her mouth, exhaling slowly in order to calm herself.

"It's not just Tufty," she said. "It's everything. Things I had, things I lost, things I should have said, things I should have done. Sometimes it all just gets a little overwhelming."

Gilligan shifted on the log next to her. "Things don't always go the way we want," he said, a little bashfully.

"You can say that again!" Mary Ann's words came out as a cynical snort of laughter.

"Things don't always go the way we want," Gilligan repeated, and it was enough to cause Mary Ann to laugh again, with honesty this time.

"You're a good friend, Gilligan," she smiled, leaning against him. "Tufty would have loved you, too."

The two friends, plus Sam, sat together on the log, watching Irving splash around in the lagoon and Joey swing from the lower branches and Emily waddle across the sand, quacking at nothing and no one in particular.

"Animals live in the moment," Gilligan said. "We could learn a lot from them."

Mary Ann reached down and squeezed his hand.

"Yes," she replied. "We could."


End file.
